Could charity art auctions hurt careers of artists who donate?

Some artists question whether they should donate their work to an auction for Butte County fire relief.

Photo: Cal Fire

Hoping to help victims of the devastating fires in Northern California, Art Services director Eric Lendl at the Minnesota Street Project asked artists represented by galleries there whether they were interested in donating a work of art to be auctioned for fire relief.

Tom Marioni, represented by the Anglim Gilbert Gallery, said he had something to donate, but that he wanted a percentage of the sale. Lendl said that although his request was respected and understood, organizers had decided that all of the money would go to the sale.

Young artists were happy to have their works seen by art-lovers, Marioni wrote, but “these works are sold for very little and do not help the worthy cause much.” In the artist’s practical view, “to ask an artist to donate art to a worthy cause and receive no percentage of the sale, and to sell it at half-price of its value means that the market for the artist is lowered, and any fans of the artist can own the work instead of buying it from the artist’s dealer.” He suggested that instead of artists donating their works, collectors donate works from their collections instead of artists. They can afford it.

Minnesota Street Project co-founder Deborah Rappaport said that works of art, experiences and other items are still being collected. The auction will be conducted online only, probably in January, by Paddle8.

She said that Lendl himself is a working artist. “This impulse came from an artist. We debated at length about the split,” she said, referring to the general division of sale price between an artist and a seller. “ We asked other artists, other gallerists, what they thought. And we decided that in this particular and unusual case, where the need is so great in Butte County, we were going to ask our artists to donate 100 percent.” She emphasized that they were aware that artists might have objections, and decided beforehand that if the people they were asking for donations “couldn’t do that, for any reason, there would be no pushback, and we’d thank them very much.”

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Leah Garchik washed up on the shores of Fifth and Mission in 1972, began her duties as a part-time temporary steno clerk, and ascended the journalistic ladder. Over the years, she has served as writer, reviewer, editor and columnist. She is the author of two books, “San Francisco: Its Sights and Secrets” and “Real Life Romance."

She is an avid knitter, a terrible accordion player, a sporadic tweeter and a pretty good speller.